‘What?’ he said in astonishment.
‘A favour,’ she repeated slowly, as if she was talking to an idiot.
Cooper recalled the last occasion Diane Fry had asked him for a favour. The time she’d gone back to Birmingham to confront an incident from her past. For some reason, she hadn’t felt able to trust her former colleagues from West Midlands Police. Had that all come round again? Had something she’d done in Birmingham rebounded on her? If so, it was hard to see how he could help her.
But he’d agreed to meet her, and she’d volunteered to come to Edendale instead of making him travel to Nottingham. That made him even more suspicious. She was obviously trying to soften him up. She’d be offering to pay for the drinks next.
They arranged to meet at the Wheatsheaf pub off Market Square. Across the road was Stone Bottom, the yard where the Way of the Eagle Martial Arts Centre had once occupied the basement of an old warehouse at the end of Bargate, the other three floors being filled with craft workshops, software developers, a small-scale publisher of countryside books and an employment agency. The steps down to the dojo were always bathed in the smell of freshly baked bread from the ventilators in the back wall of the baker’s in Hollowgate.
It seemed a century ago that he and Diane Fry had gone there together. He’d tried to be friends with her then, when she first came to E Division. Something had gone wrong along the way, and he still wasn’t quite sure what.
Cooper had a flash of recollection, back to the conversation he was having with Fry as they arrived at the dojo that day and parked their cars in the middle of an area of mud-filled potholes, with the sound of dull thumps and hoarse screams filtering through the steel grilles of the warehouse windows and that scent of baking bread.
The buildings were clustered so close together in Stone Bottom that they seemed grotesquely out of proportion from ground level as they leaned towards each other, dark and shadowy against the sky, set with long, blank rows of tiny windows. The slamming of car doors had echoed loudly against the walls and reverberated down the stone setts to the narrow bridge over the River Eden.
He and Fry had been talking about the possible motives for murder in an inquiry they were involved in, the case of a teenage girl found dead in woods outside Edendale.
‘You make people sound really complicated,’ she’d said. ‘In my experience, their motivations are usually very simple and boring.’
‘Motivations like ambition and greed?’ he’d replied. ‘The old favourites? They can certainly make people ruthless and selfish, can’t they?’
‘And sex, of course,’ she said.
‘But sex isn’t so simple either, is it?’
‘For some of us, it’s very simple, I can assure you.’
The craft workshops and software developers were still there on the upper floors of the warehouse, along with an interior designer and a photographic studio. But the martial arts centre had gone now, and so had the employment agency and the publisher.
For a moment, Cooper wondered what had happened to his old flat in Welbeck Street. He hadn’t driven past it for a while. The house had passed to his landlady’s nephew when she died, and he’d been planning to sell both of the houses she owned. Property didn’t stay on the market for long in Edendale, especially the smaller terraced houses. He was pretty sure both of them would have been snapped up and converted into family homes.
But he was happy about that. He felt no nostalgia about that first-floor flat, though it had been the first home of his own when he moved out of Bridge End Farm. Number 8 Welbeck Street had been an important part of his life for a while, but it was gone now.
Diane Fry arrived quietly. Cooper didn’t notice her until she was standing over his table and putting an arm on his shoulder to make him jump. She’d never lost the ability to creep up on him like that. He wondered if she found it funny. It was hard to tell when she so rarely smiled.
‘Ben,’ she said simply.
‘You’d better sit down. Do you want a drink?’
She held up a glass. ‘I’ve got one.’
‘So you have.’
He wondered how long she’d actually been in the pub, whether she’d been watching him from some corner while he reminisced about the past, probably baffled at his ability to be content with own company.
‘Sit down, then. Tell me what it’s all about.’
Fry explained what was happening to her, and he listened in silence, studying the way her demeanour changed. Behind the façade, she was genuinely worried.
‘I haven’t had much experience with Professional Standards,’ said Cooper, when she’d finished.
‘No, of course you haven’t,’ began Fry. ‘You—’ Then she stopped. Whatever she’d been about to say, she’d had second thoughts.
Cooper watched her curiously. She had never before been so reticent about saying exactly what she thought, even if it was rude or ill-mannered. Now something was different. It was as if she was worried about rubbing him up the wrong way. That made him feel more concerned about her than if she’d come here for another argument.
‘So that’s why I haven’t been able to get hold of you,’ he said.
‘You’ve been trying to get hold of me? Why?’
‘Oh, nothing important.’
‘Good, because I’ve been a bit busy, as I just said.’
‘It can’t be anything too serious,’ said Cooper. ‘I know people make misjudgements now and then. They have unfortunate incidents. Remember when a drunk’s finger was severed while he was being transferred into a caged van?’
‘Officers were observing standard procedure with a non-compliant prisoner,’ said Fry.
‘Of course they were. But the guy still lost a finger.’
She took another drink and eyed the rest of the customers in the pub. It was still early in the evening, but it would get busy later. The empty tables would soon fill up.
Fry put her glass down with a thump.
‘People talk,’ she said enigmatically.
‘Surely they can’t believe everything they hear.’
‘In my case, they probably do.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘They want me to go for a psychological evaluation,’ said Fry.
‘A what?’
‘You heard me. They want an assessment of my emotional and mental stability.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Cooper.
‘Is it? I’m not so sure.’
For the first time since he’d known her, Cooper saw self-doubt in Diane Fry’s eyes. Had she doubted her own stability all this time? He could sympathise with that. He’d gone through periods in his life when he felt he was out of control, or only just holding things together on the surface. Had the Diane he’d known only been on the surface all along? Was there so much more underneath that he’d never suspected?
But the moment passed. Fry took a ragged breath, and her posture changed as the old veneer of confidence returned.
‘It’s rubbish, of course,’ she said.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘But there are, you know... some incidents in my past.’
Cooper frowned. ‘Nothing that they could make a case out of for gross misconduct. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it?’
‘Losing my job? Yes, that scares me stiff.’
‘So why have you come to me?’ asked Cooper.
‘I need help,’ said Fry simply. ‘And I didn’t know who else I could trust.’
‘Trust hasn’t always been what we had between us, Diane.’
‘No, you’re right. But still... when it comes down to it, you’re the only one.’
Cooper fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair, while she watched him expectantly. She wanted an answer, but he didn’t know what to say. When it involved Diane Fry, he’d rarely known what the right thing was to say.